Duran Duran ready to give pointers to One Direction

The boy band are set to take a break after being in the spotlight for several years solid, which is something Duran Duran can relate to.

And drummer Roger Taylor reckons the group, who hit the SSE Hydro on December 6 in support of new album Paper Gods, have discovered the benefits in taking their time.

“One Direction are a very different band in a different era, but I can relate to the pressure to perform and the pressure to produce to make music because we went through that too,” he says, referring to their 80s pomp.

“If I can give any advice it’d be to simply take it easy – the world will wait for you. At that age it’s very easy to think what you do is transient, and if you don’t keep playing and producing then you’ll lose your audience. 35 years later I can tell you that the world will wait if the product is good enough.”

Chart kings in the 80s with hits like Rio, Hungry Like The Wolf and A View To A Kill, the Birmingham group are now enjoying a second spin at the top of pop. Paper Gods is their 12th release, and features a host of big-name collaborations, from Janelle Monae on lead single Pressure’s Off to former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante and troubled Hollywood actress Lindsey Lohan.

It also let the band reunite for a few tracks with Nile Rodgers, who’d previously produced the Notorious album in 1986.

“30 years on down the line and Nile is still the same guy,” explains Roger.

“He’s just so full of energy and has so much passion for life and music. It’s just infectious. He was an obvious choice but we were missing it somehow until Mark (Ronson, who produced the album) came in one day and said ‘why don’t you get Nile on the record?’

“We’d been really admiring Get Lucky from a distance. Early on in the record we heard it and thought, ‘wow, that’s incredible’ but we never thought we’d be working with him again. Everyone about this record felt like a natural journey, so nothing was pre-planned.”

The sticksman also feels that approach helped keep everything fresh for the group, and that they avoided the pitfalls of repeating themselves. If 2011’s All You Need Is Now album harked back to those 80s days, Paper Gods provides a wider variety of styles.

“We never like to make the same album twice, and everyone needs to be very different,” says Roger.

“That keeps us alive. It’s been interesting to go down a more electronic route. It was a general consciousness that we all wanted to go down that route - I’d spent years DJing and got really into electronic beats and music, so it was really satisfying to bring that into this record.”

For a man once dubbed the “hermit of pop” after he left Duran Duran in 1985, Roger seems pretty settled now. He believes he’s always been the most relaxed of the band, and that the group have always needed different personalities in the mix.

“I’ve always been pretty laid back and that was always my role in the band,” he says.

“I never got overly excited. I never got too angry, I was always pretty even so I’ve always had the diplomatic role. Every band needs one person doing that.

“ I think that makes for a really good band actually, when everyone is so different from everyone else – I’m very different from Simon, Nick’s very different from John. We’re all so different it’s unbelievable but that makes for a creative unit.”

He does, however, wish that more folk had got the group’s sense of humour over the years.

“A lot of our stuff back in the 80s was tongue in cheek,” he adds.

“Rio was very humorous, but that got overlooked and we were branded party boys. I think we weren’t actually taken as seriously as we could have been of that, because people assumed that’s who we were and overlooked they were meant to be funny.”

And he’s enthused about their Scottish return.

“Scotland has always been strong for us, and the audiences are incredible – on the first reunion tour we were at the SECC and that was an incredible night, because the crowd was so loud.”

Duran Duran, SSE Hydro, December 6, £65/£55, 6.30pm